Zones of Peace in the Third World: South America and West Africa in Comparative Perspective.

• Author: Menocal, Alina Rocha
• Position: Review

Zones of Peace in the Third World: South America and West Africa in Comparative Perspective Arie M. Kacowicz (New York: State University of New York Press, 1998) 267 pp.

While international relations scholars have traditionally devoted enormous amounts of attention to the study of war, the maintenance of international peace over extended periods of time has generally been neglected. Regional peace has been examined mostly in the context of Europe during the Cold War and the so-called democratic peace between Western democracies. Arie M. Kacowicz's Zones of Peace in the Third World: South America and West Africa in Comparative Perspective is an ambitious attempt to broaden the theoretical and historical underpinnings of the study of regional peace beyond a Western focus. Analyzing prolonged periods of international peace in South Americas Southern Cone since the 1880s and among the countries of West Africa after their independence in the 1960s, the book addresses two fundamental questions: how the preservation of long-term peace at the regional level can be explained and whether regional peace can be sustained among states which are not democratic.(1) Arguing that "[p]eace can ... indeed [be] preserved among non-democratic states," the author identifies the necessary, sufficient and favorable conditions for the maintenance of different levels of regional peace, which range from negative peace (absence of international wars) to stable peace (peace maintained on a reciprocal and consensual basis) to pluralistic security communities (highly institutionalized communities which share important economic and political links).

To explore how zones of peace are maintained, Kacowicz distills alternative explanations provided by the realist and liberal traditions and develops different hypotheses for sustained regional peace. From the realist literature, he derives the following non-mutually exclusive hypotheses: a zone of peace is more likely to be maintained when there is a regional hegemon; a regional balance of power exists; a common third party threat exists; and/or the countries in the region are isolated from one another or face constraints that create a state of powerlessness or impotence. From the liberal approach, Kacowicz elaborates four additional hypotheses explaining sustained regional peace: regional democracy, economic development, economic interdependence, transnational links and a normative consensus regarding the rules of...